TRACKLISTING

SymphonyNo.5
i. Moderato
ii. Allegretto
iii. Largo
iv. Allegro non troppo

Symphony No.9
i. Allegro
ii. Moderato
iv. Largo
v. Allegretto

RECORDING INFORMATION

Also available on SACD

Symphony No.5
The Fifth symphony was composed in the year 1937 when the former USSR was undergoing a difficult political time: any enthusiasm still remaining from the early revolutionary years was now crushed by the show trials, denunciations and disappearances that Stalin instigated. Shostakovich himself lost relatives, friends and colleagues and was put under political and artistic pressures. The fifth is a conscious bid for rehabilitation, intended to re-establish his credentials as a Soviet composer,it represents a well-calculated combination of true expression with the demand of the State. The calculation paid off. The premiere in November 1937 in Leningrad was a triumph soon followed next year with success in Moscow and Paris and all over the world. The Fifth was being held up as a model of what Soviet music could and should be. It represents a break with Shostakovich's unruly musical past: here the language is simplified, with few of the eccentricities that made him such a great satirist in the first decade of his career. Shostakovich's unmistakable fingerprints are all present, but now absorbed into a traditional four-movement symphonic structure of great clarity and power.

Symphony No.9
Since Beethoven monumental Ninth, the number nine has held a special significance for symphonists. Shostakovich himself fuelled speculation about his forthcoming Ninth. He declared it would be a large work with soloists and chorus "about the greatness of the Russian people, about our Red Army liberating our native land from the enemy". In 1945, following Russia's victory over the Nazis, Shostakovich was expected to produce something very special indeed. But Shostakovich's Ninth has turned out to be a completely different sort of symphony: no chorus, no words, no programme, no grand ambitious glorification of the Motherland or its Great Leader. The Ninth is in fact a "pure" symphony, truly witty and light. It displays a return to the satirical wit and high spirits found in much of Shostakovich's music from the 1920', but now presented with symphonic control he had acquired over the previous decade.It is among the shortest of Shostakovich's symphonies, and the five movements are therefore extremely concise.

The Ninth was first performed in Leningrad on November 1945. Some loved it, others found it "inappropriate", and not only in Russia. There was disapproval also in the West: a typical reaction was that "The Russian composer should not have expressed his feelings about the defeat of Nazism in such a childish manner" (New York World telegram, 27 July 1946).